


what you love is your fate.

by blairkitsch



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Vulnerability, Other, discussions of immortality and the implications therein, general caginess, post-episode 38
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 22:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21327808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blairkitsch/pseuds/blairkitsch
Summary: “You’re the only thing like me but I'm nothing like you.”
Relationships: Gable/Travis Matagot
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40





	what you love is your fate.

**Author's Note:**

> "then the voice in my head said
> 
> WHETHER YOU LOVE WHAT YOU LOVE
> 
> OR LIVE IN DIVIDED CEASELESS  
REVOLT AGAINST IT
> 
> WHAT YOU LOVE IS YOUR FATE"
> 
> — frank bidart, _guilty of dust_

Come morning, they’re sat across from each other. Gable had sent Jonnit (and the Captain, per Travis’s guidance) away for breakfast, Travis having mumbled something about needing to recover, he’d lost a limb and all, it’d been a very trying evening, etc., and Gable had stayed behind, looking with no small amount of interest at Travis. Worry, maybe, and Travis swallows around it. 

That ache in his chest is still there, singing louder in the face of the silence between them. Travis lets the oppressive cadence of it hang there until he feels he might drown from it.

“What did I tell you last night,” he says, without the appropriate intonation to make it a question. Gable’s eyebrows quirk at the sudden noise. They’d just been watching him as he languished in bed, dressed loosely in the dirty clothes that had been returned to him from the falconry competition by one of the spooky butlers. He keeps his eyes met with theirs as he sits upright completely.

“All sorts of things,” they say with a bemused grin. Travis tries not to scowl at it; bad moods tend not to flatter his face. “You’re much more fun when you’re like that, maybe we should grab a barrel of leeches to bring on board the ship.”

Travis shudders, despite himself. He’s never had a preference for the creepy-crawly. “Ugh. Don’t even joke.”

Gable waves a hand, as if dismissing the farce completely. “Don’t worry, Travis. Nothing I didn't already assume.”

This does nothing to do away with his worry, but he keeps his mouth shut, anyway. He watches, instead. Their gaze shifts slightly to the right, away from him and towards the open window the Captain had spent most nights gazing out into. Travis doesn’t follow their eye line, knowing with a not-insignificant feeling of misfortune that Gable exists the only thing in the room he’s interested in. That squeezing of his heart is surely just his own, now. He sighs against it.

“Here’s something… oh, let’s call it _ interesting_, about you,” Travis says, the words tumbling out of him without any intervention of his own. “When tasked with endlessness, you’ve decided not to stop loving people— or, not exactly that. I guess, more accurately, you never had to make that decision because you never had to love with any... with any finality.”

Gable stares blankly at him for a second, before furrowing their brow, appropriately. “I don't understand.”

Travis scoffs. “Of course you wouldn’t. Look: humans, the mortal ones, they love and love with their whole heart because they’ll die one day and loving someone is the only way to make that palatable. When you rip the end off of your life, though, you have to make a choice: either love and love and love and then grieve, or cut that part off of you like a rotted limb,” Travis meets Gable’s eyes. “I chose the latter, obviously. It’s easier, and when you have eternity staring you in the face, it becomes hard to feel bad for acts of selfishness.”

“So... what’s the problem?” Gable asks. They’re not being unkind, and not purposefully obtuse, which makes the question hurt more. Travis almost feels the ground beneath him shift as the divide between them deepens.

“Well, you never _ had _ to make that choice, did you?”

Gable sits back and thinks for a moment. “No... I suppose I didn’t. People die, sure, but it’s fine if it’s their time.”

“Or if you don’t have to enact revenge in their name?”

Gable meets his wry smile with a serious nod. “Exactly. Besides, I'm usually—“ the words catch in their throat for a moment, as if they’re surprised by them. They sigh. “I tend to be gone before that.”

“Flighty,” He accuses, but with no real bite behind it.

“Speak for yourself.”

“It’s survivalism. I'm not... I don't want to have to.”

“No?” They raise an eyebrow. It almost looks playful.

“No,” he sighs. His foot taps against the wooden floor, then quickly stops when he realizes it’s out of anxiety. “I'd forgotten how much I've missed it. It's embarrassing; I thought I was over it, but I've been feeling— or, something inside of me has been feeling—“ he bites his tongue. An expectant silence hangs heavy in the air between them. “You’re the only thing like me but I'm nothing like you.”

It's not an admission of anything, not really, so it must be the obvious intent lying behind it that makes Gable’s face go soft in a way that turns Travis’s stomach. “Oh, Travis—“

“But despite that,” he pushes on, “you can’t love things like me in the way we need. Because you’re all grand and eternal and divine and we’re just human. In spite of all the magic that touches me, _ I’m _ just— just an unlucky human.”

Gable scowls. “That’s not fair. Of course I love humans. Dref, and Jonnit, and—“

“And Hildred, maybe?”

“Well, maybe, it’s all been very fast and—“

“You love humans like humans love their pets. They live a fraction of your lifetime so you love them enough to tolerate that and then you move on and get another one, and then another one. right?”

“I— well, regardless if that’s true or not, Travis, you’ll continue much longer than that—“

“So, I'm just an old, bothersome cat who just won’t leave and refuses to die.”

It’s pity. There’s no reason to pretend it’s not pity on Gable’s face. Travis bites back the urge to vomit at it. He closes his eyes and waits for the outpouring of “oh, no, Travis, of course not”s, lies for humans who want so much to be loved by something bigger than themselves.

“Are you in love with me, Travis Matagot?” is what he gets instead, and it’s so much worse. There’s no point in lying, though, not now, so he doesn’t.

“Of course I am.” It comes out so much softer than he thought it would. He clears his throat, tries to sharpen his voice. “Who wouldn’t be?” No, that’s not right either. Too fragile to be a scoff. “You’re so handsome and grand and _ sure _, all the time so sure that you’re doing the right thing, and, and, you can’t die, which is great, because—“

“She won’t let you die, either?” Gable asks, and Travis snaps his eyes up at them again, incredulous.

“You—“

“You said that last night.”

Travis blinks. “I don't remember.”

“You’d lost a lot of blood.”

Travis scoffs, the right way this time. It feels good. “No thanks to you.”

The room itself seems to exhale at the more familiar patter between the two of them. Travis leans against a bedpost, suddenly exhausted from, sure, the entire night, but mainly the emotional admission. Even in simpler times, it tended to be the sort of topic he’d talk around the shape of instead of filling in anything important, if he didn’t leave the conversation outright. Still, Gable keeps their eyes on him, watching him with an amused curiosity. Travis doesn’t squirm under it; he’d always preferred the neutral attention of examination to the condescension that usually follows conversations like that. Gable’s gaze seems to probe at him, searching for something particular, lying right under just skin. Travis leaves himself open for it.

“Can I kiss you?”

Maybe too open. Travis’s heart nearly stops right there in his chest. “What?”

“I said,” Gable repeats, slightly louder, “can I—“

“I _ heard _you. I just... what?”

Gable shrugs. “Honesty is a good look on you, Matagot. So is the flattery, in truth.” They get to their feet, and step over to Travis, looming over him where he’s sat. Travis feels very small looking up at them. It's a familiar sensation, in a way, but with his heart pounding in anticipation instead of abject terror. “I like you more than you give me credit for,” they continue, softly. “If I didn't, you’d be dead by now.”

“Naturally,” he replies, smoothly and not at all strangled.

“I also like that I have to worry far less about losing you. You’re mutable in a lot of ways, but... hmm. I suppose last night proved your livelihood is not one of them. I like it. So,” they say, gently tilting his chin up a bit more. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” he exhales, and they do. It's interesting; it’s not the first time they’d kissed him. Certainly, after the centuries of crossing paths, Gable had pinned him down and fucked him so hard he couldn’t breathe at least three or four times. And it’s not the tenderness that’s new, either, because soft kisses are Gable’s preference by far. It’s the chasteness in being asked permission, then, or maybe the rawness in his heart, being splayed out so much more than he ever had been before, and Gable kissing him because of it. The emotional knot inside of him threatens to tighten at the thought so he kisses back instead, grabbing at them, trying to pull them closer. They laugh into his mouth, and a thrill jolts through Travis at it. Gable moves to pull away and Travis whines in the face of it, something animal and needing inside of him waking up. Gable laughs again.

“We can’t do that here,” they say, gently.

Travis rolls his eyes to hide his disappointment. “We’ve done _ that _ in places higher risk than a locked hotel room.”

“First time, though, that there’s a teenager who also happens to have a key to it.” Gable straightens up, and hums thoughtfully. “Speaking of, I should probably go keep an eye on him. I’d mostly just been sticking around to make sure that you were still going to be living and breathing after a night like that. I think, after so much solipsistic monologuing, you’ve proven you are.”

Travis wipes their spit off of his mouth with the back of his hand. “There’s no way you know what that word means.”

“Ah… well,” Gable pauses for a moment at that. “Neither do you.”

Travis groans, and collapses with no small amount of drama onto the bed. “Fine!” he sighs, covering his eyes in the crook of his elbow. “Go be a good babysitter to our weird little magic boy. I’ll be here if you need me, though I doubt you will.”

“No, I probably won’t,” Gable admits, and Travis waits to hear the opening and closing of the door for a few moments before he feels a hand, careful as it is imposing, lightly on his knee. “Get some rest, Travis."

He hums in uncommitted affirmative, and the hand is removed, the cold left in its wake more startling than its original presence. Silence, again, interspersed with the gentle shufflings of movement. Travis starts to feel the sleep deprivation sinking heavy into bones, and considers for a moment how easy it would be to just fall asleep like this. His shoulder would be screaming at him when he woke, but… well, he’s had worse rests. Besides, how often does he get the chance to sleep with all of his human arms and legs and torso, enjoying as much of the bed as—

Gable’s voice is just above a whisper, coming from across the room. “There’s a lot about me that you’re underestimating, you know.”

Door open. Door close.

Travis rolls onto his side, then, and keeps his back to the door.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @blairkitsch.


End file.
